Montagne Sainte-Victoire 1889

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this landscape, Montagne Sainte-Victoire, using oil on canvas. Look closely, and you can see how Renoir has built up the image with many small touches of pigment, almost like strokes of yarn in a tapestry. This isn’t just about capturing a scene, but about the physical act of applying paint to the canvas. Notice how the textures of the land and sky are evoked through the density and direction of these brushstrokes. The paint itself is a relatively new, industrialized material, and this informs the way Renoir works. The scene is a celebration of labor, with workers toiling in the fields. The painting’s apparent spontaneity belies the considerable labor involved in its creation. The work is a testament to the cultural significance of art, labor, and landscape in the late 19th century, when fine art was already becoming distanced from other kinds of making.